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Over the last week we've all enjoyed having Nicholas and Olivia with us on work experience in the Angela Marmont Centre, and as one result of their work I've now got loads of great specimen photographs for future blogs, so watch this space! If you fancy doing work experience or maybe volunteeing at the museum, you can find out all about it on our website: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/jobs-volunteering-internships/index.html So thank you to Olivia and Nicholas for your work and now it's over to you:

We have been lucky enough to work behind the scenes in the Angela Marmont Centre with the UK Biodiversity Team as part of our work experience. Working in the centre has been wonderful for both of us, not only in the fascinating people that we have met but also in the wide range of activities and tasks we have been able to participate in.

On arrival we were shown round the collections and were astonished by the sheer volume of specimens in the archives. We were also thrown into several meetings which were lucky to be able to attend and learnt a lot about how the museum functions, along with scientists time keeping abilities… they tend to get caught up in intellectual discussions.

Throughout the rest of the week we had many other opportunities to get involved. In the laboratories we extracted plant DNA and analysed along with a tour of the lab, only witnessing a fraction of their hugely impressive facilities and machines. We undertook several outdoor activities including surveys in the wildlife garden for the OPAL Project and enjoyed being a part of the Nature Live show.

We were given a hard task of pinning insects and bugs. The specimens were quite old and brittle so our attempts seemed futile as bits of leg and antenna flew across the room. The reason for attempting this was so that the insects looked more alive when it came to setting them in resin for demonstration purposes.

Throughout our week numerous artefacts and creepy crawlies were sent or brought in for identification. We were able to witness and taken part, from beginning to end on the process. For us the most interesting was a fossil brought in by a small boy. To the untrained eye it looked remarkably like stacked starfish, however within seconds the expert Luanne identified it as a stem of a sea lily which lived around 200 million years ago in the Jurassic period.

Perhaps how we spent most of our time was taking photographs of some of the bug and fossil specimens brought in and making sure they had a number for the ease of the system here in the AMC. Of course whilst doing this we saw and photographed some amazing things. There were fascinating and beautiful fossils and minerals, among which was a mammoth tooth trawled in by a fisherman in the North Sea, a necklace made of teeth and tusks and some stone tools found in the Niger.

This is part of the intriguing reply to the person who brought in the stone tools below;

‘

I’ve had a look at the stone tools that you left in the museum. They are all ground and polished stone axeheads apart from one which is roughly fractured stone [...] I believe that ground stone tools first became important in the Neolithic period, which began around 12 000 years ago. [...] However, this does not mean that these specimens are prehistoric in age at all, as ground stone tools are still quite commonly made around the world, both as tourist objects and as working tools for some groups.’

Finally on our last day, in our final hours, we were privileged enough to be shown some of the amazing historical collection, dating as far back as the sixteen hundreds. Sloane was amongst them and we were able to witness his great plant collections, which contain drawings and the first specimens brought back from Jamaica, China and, at the time many other remote unexplored countries of the world. It was very unique experienced and we feel privileged to be among the few who have gained an insight into the histories of natural science and art.

Overall it has been a marvellous week filled with variety and no hour was the same, we only wish it was possible to stay longer.